Gameplay

Sommaire

The last stage of the game, in which the player is in control of a space ship (the UFO) with an interstellar drive, has been described as a giant sandbox mode. The player will be presented with the option to engage in wide-ranging missions similar in game mechanics to Grand Theft Auto. This appears to reverse the gaming convention of free-form tutorial modes followed by goal-oriented endgames. Spore is much more goal-oriented (survive, eat, reproduce, etc.) in its early stages and gets more open-ended and free-form as the game unfolds. At the UFO stage the player will have access to tools, such as the creature editor, from previous stages. It was revealed at MacWorld '08 by April Jones that you are able to jump into any stage of the game at any time. For example, you can jump from the cell stage to the space stage.

Wright calls the game a "massively single player online game." Simultaneous multiplayer gaming is not a feature of Spore. The creatures, vehicles, and buildings the player can create will be uploaded automatically to a central database (or a peer-to-peer system), cataloged and rated for quality, and then re-distributed to populate other player's games. The data transmitted will be extremely small, only 1 kilobyte according to Wright.(The data about the given creature is stored in the image file (a .png file) in your 'My Documents' directory, more than 1 kilobyte per picture --Tyrnt 00:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)) (Think of it as sharing the DNA template of a creature while the game builds the animal itself, which represents a few megabytes of texturing, animation, etc.) When the player progresses to a new stage, Spore will import creatures as needed. For example, if a flying carnivore is needed to balance the ecosystem, a creature that fits that description will be downloaded. The editor is also a neat feature in this upcoming game. With this "editor" you can design everything from your species, to your buildings, to your vehicles. That includes tanks, aircraft, submarines, boats, and UFO's.

Initially from the primordial soup to the tribal stage you have to kill and eat to get evolution points. Once you amass enough you lay an egg and this takes you to the Creature editor where you can shape your creature and add / remove body parts. Once you hit land you need to mate to get eggs. After that, it is unknown as how you earn points, though conquest of enemies on your planet and in space seems one plausible possibility. To what extent you can change your creature is unknown.

From the descriptions we have, fights can be both AI controlled, by giving your creature a command, or you can take a more involved part in combat. For example, if you tell your creature to bite the other creature, your creature will bite the other creature. But it you prefer to be more involved, if you have a creature that can glide, you can bite, fly away to charge range, charge then fly away again and repeat. This allows both new and experienced players to do combat effectively.

Combat is akin to a World of Warcraft type fighting style. You approach a creature and can use a couple of different 'moves' available based on the different parts your creature has. These moves include strike, charge, bite, and spit. Each of these have ranks which, also based on the type of part the creature has does more damage at a time. --Tyrnt 00:18, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Wright called it the "Swiss Army Knife" of the Spore universe. The demo demonstrated that when the interstellar drive is obtained, it can fly all over the galaxy and contact other life forms; establish interplanetary settlements and terraform and even destroy planets. Other demonstrations have show the ability to place large monoliths that evolve nearby creatures stages. Other features mentioned but not shown include the ability to abduct, cross-breed, and even epic or enlarge creatures.

Will you be able to enslave other races, or create pets or other domestic animals?Modifier

The intergalactic zoo is confirmed for the UFO stage of the game. Domestication was shown in the tribal stage, where the creatures lay eggs for food. Although it has not been confirmed in any other stage that's possible.

There was definitely weather when the Genesis device was used during the demo: thunderclouds and lightning. If that was specific to the genesis device or whether there is normally weather is not known for sure. No other weather-like effects were shown during the talk though Will has said they would like to add weather if possible.

In the E2 video with Robin Williams, as Will first gets his UFO and pulls out, he says, "We have weather systems, some storms going down there," as he rolled his mouse over some clouds.

The evidence of rain is found in one of the tribal videos here: http://www.simprograms.com/?cat=16. In one of the videos a tribe is defending themselves against a predator while it is raining/

The player moves through a vast, transitional game-world, starting in a 2D tide pool, moving somehow to a full 3D world of land, sea and air, to player-designed cities, into orbit around the world, traveling from planet to planet, then between stars, and finally throughout the entire galaxy.

The expression of time changes depending on what stage the player is currently within. Time slowing down relative to the player as the game progresses. Microscopic to Galactic, millions of years in a generation to real-time.

Will Wright has stated that creatures will not have special abilities (unless you consider flying,built-in weapons(claws, teeth
spines, clubs, possible ranged abilities, etc.) , specific ability ranks, etc. "special" abilities). But recently it was stated that depending on your creature's diet, you can get special abilities in tribal stage plus, to help you progress. From the time line after completing stages you get special abilities